40+ Years of Chess Adventures

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SHOCK AND AWE NEARLY DONE!

47 annotated games. 2 pages of excising of comments from the white section and the black section. Many diagrams. How Thinker’s Press came about. And what Simon had to say about the book (at least the first half).

The cover (back and front) will be done this weekend assuming the barcode won’t be a pain in the ass like it has been (I have old software and don’t want to buy an upgrade if there is one). The number of pages is around 80.

Son Rob did the cover art on short notic–then his computer crapped out (and, it was a bad motherboard on his Mac laptop!). He and I are both dedicated doncha know?

In the meantime I will be ordering some Simon William’s DVDs and books. Anything in particular you may want? info@chessbutler.com

It’s been hectic. Simon has been in day in and day out hecticness too. I was amused when that guy who accused me of being a Christian and a bad speller wrote–he was concerned I might make some money off this event!! I wondered what he had done in the service of chess. My occasional spelling mistakes were caused by a brain injury I suffered from a stroke. When I was in high school I scored 99.7 or 99.9 percentile on the spelling test, I wonder how he did. As to being a Christian, I do not apologize for that and anyone who knows me knows there are lots of things I won’t apologize for including being politically incorrect! Wienies!

Simon is doing lectures this week, and next week to keep paying his bills. I do that too. I have good customers, just need more. So if you sign up for the Festival that’s coming, I certainly will be pleased. It takes a lot of tickets to be sold to pay for this thing and I have even had help! In fact Luke Thompson (Tony’s son) is signing up to come along with his brother Kian. A total family affair because Dad Tony is coming too. Can you do this? info@chessbutler.com

I have an advance preview (subject to possible change) of what Simon will be covering too:

1) Typical sacrifices to crush the Sicilian (shows some games with typical sacs ending in mate). Often these attacks are reminiscent of attacks in some other openings too.

3) The lazy way to become an attacking Grandmaster. (Going to show simple patterns of attack. An opening that leads into a middlegame attack). Simple patterns, who can’t use that?

4) Jumping into your opponents mind. (Showing examples of how important it is to think about your opponent’s ideas). Getting into a customer’s mind is important, so it is when it comes to chess.

5) The most shocking attacks of all time! This is a Williams original!

6) How to calculate better. Who, on this planet, could not use this?

I know these will all be invaluable. Simon and I discuss all these things while running our regular business life. James Pratt even sent a heads up about coming Simon Williams activities in England. Right now we are wrestling with getting a Work Visa for his US performances. The amount of red tape needed just to keep the bureaucrats happy. Maybe they should apply for a Work Visa too. There are fees for that too, so the SMUG guy who wrote and criticized efforts and costs for putting on an event like this is, once again, terribly misguided. I don’t want an apology from him either. To never hear from this twerp again would be good enough. info@chessbutler.com

We are close to 40 registered and I expect some more because we (originated by my friend Lazaro Munoz) are planning something to get registrants to “come” who can’t come!! This, of course takes a bit of time in sorting out the details, and time is $$$. So if you want to come, but can’t come, LET US KNOW. Lot of benefits, but the cost will be more than $150 (the fee amount for those who are coming).

I THINK THIS IS GOOD NEWS BY CRACKY!

NOW, BACK TO WORK. Let me know if you are interested in this alternate plan because we will have to produce a DVD of the Saturday session. That means video recording and editing plus the cost of making and burning the disks. You can have a life time of memories. We don’t know the cost of this extra yet, but it will be what the attendees see on August 19. We’ll have fun won’t we?

I know there will be some worry warts who will want to know how much this alternate PLAN will be or they won’t put their toe in the pool. I don’t yet know because I don’t know how much the costs will be to get help doing the video work. All I know is that Simon will have the DVDs on his website as well as the book and none of that have been determined yet either. But if you want to get the whole package from Thinkers’ Press here in the USA, it would help us too.

Originally I had planned to announce at the Festival a Chess Festival 6 and even had one or two celebrities in mind, having already talked to one of them. And as good as these folks would be, comparing themselves to Simon Williams would be a stretch. So instead of doing that, I just wanted people to come to THIS one. This is so much preparation that to do another one, hmmm, I would have to give a lot of thought to that, find another sponsor (like this year), a date of acceptability, and someone to help me. That’s more work, just right there! I am not 30 anymore nor even 40.

People have proven to love our Chess Festivals but it is still a job to get people to come because, “How can we better than the last time?” Well, 2004 was our last Chess Festival.

2010 our last Chess Clinic (where I sang part of a song to sell books!) We hired a comedic chess talent this time. What do we need for the next one? Evel Knievel to ride a steam powered cycle while playing chess and jumping over the Snake River canyon? (After coming back to life!) Believe it or not, I once contemplated getting Al Pacino to come, or Viswanathan Anand. Like friggin Hertz car rental, we do try harder.